Mac users have long had an excellent universal notification application called Growl to unify alerts from various applications in OS X. In more recent times, we've seen two promising Growl spin-offs spring up for the Windows crowd: Growl for Windows and Snarl.

Snarl is the oldest of the two, and while it didn't have all that much to offer the first time we covered it, it's grown significantly in the past year. Growl for Windows, on the other hand, is relatively new (we first saw it back in May), but also features pretty solid support for a lot of popular applications.

We're nuts for Growl on OS X, but it's been hard to decide which to use on Windows—and whether either is really worth using at this point. (We love competition in software, but with these applications, it may also mean developers are less likely to support one out of the box if there isn't a clear choice.) So if you've tried your hand at both, let's hear what you think: